The Best Canvas Library

(might be your own!)

Hi!

The Unbearable Lightness of Canvas

Why has HTML5's ⟨canvas⟩ element has captured people's attention?

But... (there's always a "but")

For all it's awesomeness, Canvas has drawbacks as well:

Why reinvent the wheel?

Plenty of third-party libraries / frameworks available, but there are tradeoffs

DIY vs DRY

DIY = Do It Yourself

DIY vs DRY

DRY = Don't Repeat Yourself

Principle: Keeping it Lean

Push as little code down the wire as possible

The "first-party" library

DRY-U-DIY-IMA™

Recycle, recycle, recycle!

Take inspiration from everywhere you can

Ruby...

# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# 2. Set up constants to aid with describing the passage directions
# --------------------------------------------------------------------

N, S, E, W = 1, 2, 4, 8
DX         = { E => 1, W => -1, N =>  0, S => 0 }
DY         = { E => 0, W =>  0, N => -1, S => 1 }
OPPOSITE   = { E => W, W =>  E, N =>  S, S => N }

# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# 3. The recursive-backtracking algorithm itself
# --------------------------------------------------------------------

def carve_passages_from(cx, cy, grid)
  directions = [N, S, E, W].sort_by{rand}

  directions.each do |direction|
    nx, ny = cx + DX[direction], cy + DY[direction]

    if ny.between?(0, grid.length-1) && nx.between?(0, grid[ny].length-1) && grid[ny][nx] == 0
      grid[cy][cx] |= direction
      grid[ny][nx] |= OPPOSITE[direction]
      carve_passages_from(nx, ny, grid)
    end
  end
end

carve_passages_from(0, 0, grid)

... to JavaScript

// --------------------------------------------------------------------
// 2. Set up constants & helper functions
// --------------------------------------------------------------------

var N = 1, S = 2, E = 4, W = 8,
    DIRECTIONS = { N: 1, S:  2, E:  4, W: 8 },
    DX         = { E: 1, W: -1, N:  0, S: 0 },
    DY         = { E: 0, W:  0, N: -1, S: 1 },
    OPPOSITE   = { E: W, W:  E, N:  S, S: N }

function shuffle(array)
{ // from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5150665/generate-random-list-of-unique-rows-columns-javascript
    for(var j, x, i = array.length; i; j = parseInt(Math.random() * i), x = array[--i], array[i] = array[j], array[j] = x);
    return array;
};

// --------------------------------------------------------------------
// 3. The recursive-backtracking algorithm itself
// --------------------------------------------------------------------

function carve_passages_from(cx, cy, grid) {
    dir_keys = shuffle("NSEW".split(''));

    for (var d=0; d= 0 && ny <= grid.length-1) && (nx >= 0 && nx <= grid[ny].length-1) && (grid[ny][nx].d == 0)) {
            grid[cy][cx].d |= DIRECTIONS[dir];
            grid[ny][nx].d |= OPPOSITE[dir];

            carve_passages_from(nx, ny, grid)
        }
    }
}

So what makes a good game library?

Recap

  1. Canvas is awesome
  2. DRY-U-DIY-IMA™
  3. Build for today, plan for tomorrow

Thanks.

The Best Canvas Library

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